Trebooze had drunk a great
deal too much wine, and as he became aware of the fact, became
proportionately anxious that Tom should drink too much also; out of
which story Tom picked the plain facts, that Trebooze's father had
mortgaged Pentremochyn estate for more than its value, and that Lord
Minchampstead had foreclosed; while some equally respectable uncle, or
cousin, just deceased, had sold the reversion of Carcarrow to the same
mighty Cotton Lord twenty years before. "And this is the way, sir,
the land gets eaten up by a set of tinkers, and cobblers, and
money-lending jobbers, who suck the blood of the aristocracy!"
The oaths we omit, leaving the reader to pepper Mr. Trebooze's
conversation therewith, up to any degree of heat which may suit his
palate.
Tom sympathised with him deeply, of course; and did not tell him, as
he might have done, that he thought the sooner such cumberers of the
ground were cleared off, whether by an encumbered estates' act, such
as we may see yet in England, or by their own suicidal folly, the
better it would be for the universe in general, and perhaps for
themselves in particular. But he only answered with pleasant
effrontery--
"Ah, my dear sir, I am sure there are hundreds of good sportsmen who
can sympathise with you deeply. The wonder is, that you do not unite
and defend yourselves. For not only in the West of England, but in
Ireland, and in Wales, and in the north, too, if one is to believe
those novels of Currer Bell's and her sister, there is a large and
important class of landed proprietors of the same stamp as yourself,
and exposed to the very same dangers.
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